Client Alerts — Barbers and Editors
A potential client is doing some research: he’s looking into the legal implications of sharing a vacation property with his brother and his sister and their families.
It’s Sunday morning, and he’s at home, looking for informal legal advice. He fires up Google and searches for “Family Property Agreement.”
And then he finds this: a client alert titled SHARING A FAMILY RETREAT: THE FIVE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF A FAMILY PROPERTY AGREEMENT.
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Go ahead and take a look at the alert. Give it a read. If you’re short on time, read just the first paragraph (the one that’s supposed to grab the reader’s attention and inspire him to continue reading). Here it is:
Sharing a treasured family retreat can be a traumatic and divisive issue unless handled with great care. For example, who decides which family members can use the property during optimal times such as July or over the holidays? Who decides when it is time to replace the pool or build a new guest house, and how these capital costs are to be paid? What is the annual budget? What if one owner won’t pay his or her share? Who decides to hire or fire the groundskeeper, a gardener or the cook? What if some, but not all, of the owners want to sell the property? What if one owner dies and faces significant inheritance taxes? What are the rights of any divorced non-lineal spouse?
The first problem is obvious: questions are not examples of traumatic and divisive issues, are they? We know what the authors meant, but they didn’t express themselves clearly, and that’s not a good way to advertise legal services, is it?
The second problem isn’t quite so striking. It has to do with audience. Who is the target audience for this piece? If it’s a potential client looking for advice, then using a cryptic term like non-lineal spouse sends the wrong message. It says, “We speak to you in a way you can’t really understand.”
Quite obviously, the attorneys who wrote this alert are very sharp thinkers. But the firm they work for doesn’t provide them what they (and all good writers) need. It doesn’t provide them an editor. If it did, that opening paragraph would engage readers, rather than leave them wondering if this alert is representative of the firm’s concept of excellence.
So, what might become of that first paragraph if the authors have access to an editor? Perhaps this:
Sharing a family retreat can be a very rewarding experience. Then again, it can lead to some serious disputes. What happens when there are competing claims to use the property over a holiday weekend? What happens when one family member wants to build a new pool house, and another thinks the old one just needs some repair? What if someone’s not paying his or her fair share of the costs, or is letting friends use the property? What if one owner dies and faces significant inheritance taxes?
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Read the very last line of the alert:
To opt-out from future communications please visit: http://www.acmelawfirm.com/vtu/p70978671VVyMcf98
This is absurd. Imagine this: imagine picking up a copy of a newsletter, and then finding instructions in it on how to not get any more copies of it!
The firm’s upper management claims that, “We know that focusing on excellence works,” but adding an unsubscribe notice to a Web page doesn’t support the claim. In fact, it suggests the lack of an essential ingredient for excellence: attention to detail.
Here’s my guess: this firm’s upper management is up to its ears in far more pressing matters. If it considered this for just a minute — if it considered the potential cost of not having a system in place to make sure attorney-authored articles aren’t published before they’re ready to be published — then it would employ an editor. And it wouldn’t wait for some embarrassing episode to occur before it made sure its publications supported its claims about excellence.
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It’s an odd thing. My guess is the two lawyers who wrote this alert regularly spend good money to get their hair done, because they know that appearances certainly do matter. But an editor?
